PHP IDEs
 

I'm trying to teach myself PHP with the aid of a book, but I'm finding it a little tricky having to just use notepad. Maybe I've been spoilt by all the lovely features of Visual Studio 2005, but if someone could recommend a decent (and free) IDE for PHP that would be ace. Debugging support is essential, and it would be really great if it had anything like IntelliSense, but no big deal if it doesn't

Re: PHP IDEs
 

I think Eclipse ( www.eclipse.org ) has development tools for php.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

it does http://www.phpeclipse.de, never tried it though, so have no idea how good it is.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

As a half way house, get a decent text editor with syntax highlighting, etc. I personally use Crimson Editor (http://www.crimsoneditor.com) even though there's nothing that special about it, and it ceased development ages ago. You can save directly to remote sites (useful with PHP), makes sequential backups of any saves, and the highlighting stuff means I notice 90% of the typos I make, without being burdened by anything too elaborate. It also allows you to switch to syntaxes for ASP, SQL, Perl, etc (or design your own) which is useful for the stuff I do.

Also, macros are a godsend for a lot of general data handling stuff (e.g. formatting a list of items for insertion into a table).

A doddle to setup, and even with the docs/syntax files/other gumpf it's only 2.5mb or something like that.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

Its not an IDE by any means (though the macros/scripts are reasonably flexible), but these days I've found Context to be invaluable and has become my defacto dev platform.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

Eclipse with PDT is what I currently use. It is still not satisfiable, but after testing zend, phped, phpeclipse, vs.php and a lot of freeware ide's I consider Eclipse/PDT as most useful IDE.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

I use HTMLKit for just about anything (www.chami.com) Its free (also a paid version is available) and it ahs a heap of plugins available. It has everything you need.

If you are looking for RAD, then i cannot help you, excpet that RAD is stupid :P. If you insist, try Delphi for PHP, they say its fun

Re: PHP IDEs
 

phpeclipse is horrible, I quite like PDT though, and as it's still actually being developed (phpeclipse is basically dead) it can only get better :)

Re: PHP IDEs
 

Why?

Re: PHP IDEs
 

He is probably mistaking RAD with WYSIWYG. I agree that WYSIWYG might be stupid, unless the tool is well developed and tested (f.i. Qt Designer or Windows Forms Designer). However, with Websites it is always tough to use WYSIWYG.

RAD tools again can simply be tools which help you refactoring / testing / debugging your code in an efficient way (fast + easy to use / easy to get used to). Those are cool, and life savers at times.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

Does anyone know zend studio? I'm wondering if its any good and, more importantly, worth € 356
Another question: edit: OK, I admit I'm stupid

Re: PHP IDEs
 

I use Zend Studio and think it's worth the money. I'd recommend you look at the http://www.php-editors.com/ site. It has a basically is a site made up to answer your question

I used textpad for years. Then I used php designer for a while (free for personal use)

Re: PHP IDEs
 

I also use Zend Studio and it is very good, but unless you are very serious about PHP then its a lot of money to invest, if you are using windows then Programmers Notepad is good and free, but its only really an editor.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

Sorry to necro, but Adobe Dreamweaver also is good.

But then its a bit expensive.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

jpadpro is one, the beta of netbeans 6.5 also handle php better than previously

Re: PHP IDEs
 

6.5 isnt in beta anymore, its released
Also has a beta plugin for python work now too

Re: PHP IDEs
 

I love and suggest new free PHP IDE - Codelobster PHP Edition
with Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and Smarty plug-ins.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

I don't personally use PHP but my mate used to use Netbeans a lot..maybe worth a look?

Re: PHP IDEs
 

Notepad++ is also a very good one, if i didnt use dreamweaver then N++ would be it.

Re: PHP IDEs
 

Eclipse with PDT is what I use (and most important FREE!) :D

Re: PHP IDEs
 

I used to use eclipse pdt until it occurred to me what a pile of shit it was, netbeans is a lot faster and smoother and handles php just as well as eclipse.